The invention relates to the field of autonomous delivery of items. More particularly, the invention relates to delivering an item to a recipient in a trusted manner using an autonomous vehicle.
It is a known concept to deliver items (such as parcels, packages and letters) to a recipient using an autonomous vehicle (AV) (or semi-autonomous vehicle (SAV)). However, many problems and challenges exist in providing an automated parcel delivery system which employs an AV.
One such problem relates to ensuring that an item delivered by an automated parcel delivery system can be trusted by a recipient. For example, on route to deliver an item, an AV may be intercepted or tampered with, thus raising the possibility of the item being altered or changed by an unknown or unauthorized person. A recipient of an item delivered by an AV may therefore exhibit a reduced level of trust in the delivered item compared to conventional delivery methods.
Another problem relates to confirming that an item has been successfully delivered to an intended recipient. Confirmation of successful delivery may be required, for example, for insurance or security reasons, wherein the sender wishes to demonstrate or prove that the intended recipient did indeed receive an item. Proposed concepts for addressing this issue are intrusive since they use retinal scanners (provided on the AV) to perform a retina scan of the recipient for identification purposes.